The NGOs and Funders behind the Campaign to “Save Umm Al-Hiran”

January 18, 2017

In 2013, NGO Monitor published “NGOs and the Negev Bedouin Issue in the Context of Political Warfare,” a report detailing how NGOs manipulate the issue of Bedouins in order to promote politicized agendas. To this day, NGOs continue to ignore legal decisions regarding Bedouin villages and instead utilize inflammatory rhetoric to lobby the UN, the European Union, and international media.

The violent events in the unrecognized village of Umm Al-Hiran highlight the way in which NGOs, financially backed by European governments, intensify conflict between the Bedouin community and the State of Israel.

The following politicized NGOs are active in this campaign:

Adalah

Adalah is the leading NGO in the campaign for Umm Al-Hiran, primarily through litigation.

Between 2014-2015, the European Union provided Adalah with €100,000 for a project titled “Promoting human rights among Bedouins-Arabs in the Negev.”1

In 2016, Adalah requested $30,000 for a project titled “Adalah’s Emergency Project to #Save_UmalHiran.” In the grant proposal, Adalah requested funding for one month in order “to litigate, advocate, campaign and mobilize the public so that no home is demolished and no Umm al‐Hiran resident is evicted.”

In the proposal, Adalah defines the Bedouins as “Palestinians,” warns of an imminent “Nakba,” and describes Israel as a “racist” state.

Adalah concludes its grant proposal by stating that “Although our fundraising campaign will run for 1 month, our efforts in the courts and on the ground will continue until we ensure that all homes in Umm al‐Hiran remain standing, and that all residents remain on the land!” (emphasis in original)

In an interactive map published by NCF, the NGO refers to new Israeli towns built in the Negev as “Jewish Settlements.” (The Negev Desert is within the 1949 Armistice Lines and was included in territory given to Israel under the 1948 UN Partition Plan.)

In a December 2015 position paper, NCF called on the Israeli Government to “cease its discriminatory policy of encouraging the expansion of Jewish settlement in the Negev and concentrating the Bedouin residents in towns while demolishing their villages.”

In the conclusion of the paper, NCF states that the “demolition of Atīr and Umm al-Ḥīrān is oppressive and racist” and will “deepen the rift between the Arab and Jewish populations.”

NGO Monitor research shows that the NGOs Adalah, Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR), and Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality (NCF) receive European government funding for projects that contribute to the exacerbating of tensions between the Bedouin community and the State of Israel.